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The Brush Harrow

Winslow Homer American
1865
Not on view
Returned to lender
This work of art was on loan to the museum and has since been returned to its lender.
One of Homer’s most poignant Civil War subjects, The Brush Harrow depicts two children laboring to prepare a field for spring planting using an outmoded agricultural tool—a harrow made of tree branches. The quiet scene shows the war’s human, socioeconomic, and environmental impact on the home front, where young boys do the work of absent men. It is one of three canvases of nearly the same size—along with Prisoners from the Front (1866, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 22.207) and Veteran in a New Field (1865, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 67.187.131)—that the artist painted in 1865-66. As a group, the works demonstrate the variety of Homer’s symbolic approaches to rendering the epic conflict and its tragic and hopeful aftermath.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: The Brush Harrow
  • Artist: Winslow Homer (American, Boston, Massachusetts 1836–1910 Prouts Neck, Maine)
  • Date: 1865
  • Culture: American
  • Medium: Oil on canvas
  • Dimensions: 24 x 37 13/16 in. (61 x 96 cm)
    Framed: 35 x 49 x 3 1/2 in. (88.9 x 124.4 x 8.9 cm)
  • Credit Line: Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Cambridge, Mass., Anonymous Gift (1939.229)
  • Rights and Reproduction: Photo © President and Fellows of Harvard College
  • Curatorial Department: The American Wing